Pilot evaluation of the Index Based Flood Insurance in Bihar, India: Lessons of experiences

The Government of Bihar (GOB) with the help of Government of India (GOI) introduced and implemented various crop insurance programs, to provide protection against losses caused by fluctuations in the output of a crop from one year to another or from one crop season to another. Traditional agricultural insurances are designed to make compensation to client farmers affected by various disasters and natural calamities based on individual yield losses or damage to crops and livestock (Ahmed, 2013; Swain and Patnaik, 2016). For developing countries like India, with large numbers of smallholder farmers, measuring such individual losses would incur enormous costs for insurance companies. The index-based insurance offers an alternative in which individual assessment is not necessary. Advances in satellite technology and data analysis were integrated to develop index insurance products, which were piloted in different countries throughout the world such as India, Ethiopia, Senegal, and United States. The index insurance products help minimize the high transaction costs and have the potential to expand the reach of insurance policies to rural areas that were previously considered uninsurable (Swain and Patnaik, 2016; Smith and Watts, 2019). The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has developed an Index-Based Flood Insurance (IBFI) product integrating hi-tech modeling and satellite imagery (Amarnath and Sikka, 2018; Matheswaran et al. 2019). The product was pilot tested among 200 farmers in six villages of the Gaighat Block of Muzaffarpur District, Bihar during the Khariff season, 2017. This report presents the findings of the IBFI ex-post evaluation undertaken in the pilot areas in Muzaffarpur. The findings of this study provide lessons on how index-based insurance schemes can be made more inclusive, and inform any development of a scheme for future upscaling by IWMI. The findings are based on the qualitative assessment made in April 2018 and a household survey conducted in July 2018

Balancing wetland conservation and development in the Sanjiang Plains: a review of current status and options. Sanjiang Plain Wetlands Protection Project, final report

Wetlands / Watershed management / Nature reserves / Performance indexes / Education / Capacity building / China / Sanjiang Plain / Jiangsu Yancheng Wetlands Project

Making index-based flood insurance socially inclusive in Bangladesh: challenges and options

Floods and other weather-related disasters plague farmers in Bangladesh, and climate change threatens to exacerbate these risks. At stake are the livelihoods of millions of small and marginal farmer households that are at risk of becoming further entrenched in poverty. Lack of compensation or other buffering mechanisms means crop losses give rise to deepening cycles of debt, especially when cultivation is financed through loans. While neighboring India has developed strong policy and strategic direction for using risk transfer mechanisms, such as Weather Index Insurance (WII), as a disaster risk reduction tool, policy support in Bangladesh is lukewarm. To date, most WII schemes have been pilots implemented mainly by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and donors. The Index-based Flood Insurance (IBFI) project of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) hopes to adapt the pilot scheme it is trialling in Bihar, India, to Bangladesh. To understand how such a scheme can be made accessible, especially to marginal groups, fieldwork was undertaken in Sirajganj district. Here, a WII pilot project, funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which offers insurance for crops during both the Aman and Boro seasons is ongoing. This brief is informed by findings from this fieldwork

Institutional options available to ensure that index-based flood insurance (IBFI) is socially inclusive in Bihar, India

Flood disaster is one of the greatest challenges affecting the livelihoods of the people of Bihar, India, hampering interventions aimed at addressing poverty, nutrition and health issues. Small and marginal farmers, tenant farmers and female-headed households are the most vulnerable to floods. Past insurance schemes implemented in Bihar, including both conventional and index-based flood insurance (IBFI) schemes, have been largely biased towards larger farmers. As a result, such schemes failed to reach the small and marginal farmers, and other vulnerable groups, despite them being the most in need of risk transfer mechanisms (Singh and Singh 2013). An institutional mapping was followed by interviews conducted with key stakeholders engaged in crop insurance schemes. Based on these interviews, this brief attempts to highlight the existing institutional mechanisms that can support tenant farmers and other vulnerable groups to gain access to IBFI. It also explains how the line agencies of the Government of India (GoI) and the State Government of Bihar (GoB) could use the identified institutional mechanisms to support the future upscaling of IBFI schemes

Ex-Post evaluation of the second pilot of the Index-Based Flood Insurance in Bihar, India: Reflections for upscale

The major objectives of the evaluation were to understand the performance of the IBFI product in reaching diverse groups of farmers and the hindrances to making the insurance more inclusive, in order to recommend solutions and strategies to address equity issues

Research in development: learning from the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems

This working paper aims to synthesize and share learning from the experience of adapting and operationalizing the Research in Development (RinD) approach to agricultural research in the five hubs under the The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. It seeks to share learning about how the approach is working in context and to explore the outcomes it is achieving through initial implementation over 3 ½ years. This learning can inform continuation of agricultural research in the second phase of the CGIAR research programs and will be useful to others aiming to implement research programs that seek to equitably build capacity to innovate in complex social-ecological systems. Each of the chapters in this working paper have shown that RinD has produced a range of outcomes that were often unexpected and broader in scope than might result from other approaches to agricultural research. RinD also produces innovations, and there is evidence that it builds capacity to innovate. - See more at: http://www.aas.cgiar.org/publications/research-development-learning-cgiar-research-program-aquatic-agricultural-systems#sthash.xfjhbHpl.dpu

Wetland dynamics: Links with spatial, ecological and socio-economic related issues in the western coastal belt of Sri Lanka

WetlandsAssessmentLagoonsMarshesEcologyEcosystemsSocial aspectsEconomic aspects